Tradier harnesses the power of APIs and the Apigee management platform from Google to deliver democratized FinTech functionality and create value for its growing ecosystem.

Google Cloud Results

Processes up to 1 billion API calls monthly through the Apigee platform

Billions of dollars transacted through Apigee

Tradier uses the Apigee API management platform from Google to abstract the legacy complexities of capital markets so that developers can build FinTech applications in an agile, nimble, and quick fashion at minimal cost. The company embodies the evolution of what cloud technology can enable in the form of an API-first business delivered as a service.

"Financial markets are becoming fundamentally decentralized and unbundled. The services that large legacy banks and brokerage firms used to offer are being supplanted by Tradier's microservices and APIs, which power innovation."

—Dan Raju, Co-founder, CEO & Chairman, Tradier

The rise of API-powered FinTech

Historically, companies that wanted to build systems, applications, or services to interact with the stock market would have to build an entire brokerage operation from scratch. This would include data infrastructure, compliance infrastructure, and storage capabilities. It could take years and massive capital expense to accomplish everything that was required to be ready to serve customers.

Tradier provides this infrastructure as an API-based service so that the same companies can launch investor applications in as little as a few weeks. This democratized access means that FinTech innovation can come from anywhere, giving the same opportunities to create new products to everyone, from enterprise customers to startups.

"Financial markets are becoming fundamentally decentralized and unbundled," says Dan Raju, co-founder, CEO, and chairman at Tradier. "The services that large legacy banks and brokerage firms used to offer are being supplanted by Tradier's microservices and APIs, which power innovation."

More than 200 companies use Tradier to develop and launch new products, or to add new features and functions that they traditionally would not have offered in existing products. With a large and diverse user base, Tradier faced the challenge of managing its partners in way that helps ensure it can grant credentials, track, monitor, and report in an efficient and equitable manner.

"Apigee is integral to the Tradier offering. They have been great partners and have always collaborated and enabled us to innovate at a pace that helped Tradier attract developers and innovative companies."

—Dan Raju, Co-founder, CEO & Chairman, Tradier

At the same time, the company recognized the inherent value of its partners for their power to leverage Tradier APIs to innovate. Tradier's fundamental market disruption is the partner ecosystem, where the company is engaged along with its partners to deliver value to the entire ecosystem in the form of new products and services.

Embracing an API-powered ecosystem

Tradier has moved beyond providing great APIs toward engaging its ecosystem. If a customer wants a specific dataset, the company doesn't automatically build a new product. Instead, Tradier looks to the ecosystem to build the product. With this approach, Tradier has taken its capabilities and multiplied them by hundreds.

"The fundamental difference between thinking about an API ecosystem versus an API product is the difference between being a participant who's enabling innovation and not just a company delivering a set of technical capabilities," Raju says.

Tradier takes an outside-in approach toward engaging its API ecosystem. Constantly listening to participants and helping to enable and empower them to create value is fundamental to the company's business model. Rather than simply focusing on building new capabilities on its own, Tradier listens to what functionalities customers need and facilitates development. In many cases, the ecosystem generates the requested product organically rather than Tradier needing to do it.

"I love APIs because they allow you to empower others to create value. The concept of empowering others to create value along with you is what is the most satisfying, and the most fascinating, thing about APIs," says Raju.

"We see tremendous potential in the synergy of Apigee and Google as it brings to the market a vast extended capability set based on the Google Cloud Platform."

—Dan Raju, Co-founder, CEO & Chairman, Tradier

Delivering value at scale

Tradier handles between 500 million to 1 billion API calls and a billion dollars in transactions a month, and all of them run through the Apigee API management platform. Apigee's last mile forms the single layer that manages Tradier's infrastructure, including security, analytics, developer interactions, and execution. The company also uses Apigee to comply with an array of regulatory reporting, mandated by Tradier's status as a FINRA (Financial Industry Regulatory Authority)-regulated entity.

"Apigee is integral to the Tradier offering. They have been great partners and have always collaborated and enabled us to innovate at a pace that helped Tradier attract developers and innovative companies. We see tremendous potential in the synergy of Apigee and Google as it brings to the market a vast extended capability set based on the Google Cloud Platform."

Tradier is an API-centric ecosystem that delivers value to an entire set of players where the nucleus is the Apigee API management suite, which helps deliver, innovate, publish, manage, monitor, and secure the ecosystem on a day-to-day basis. Simplicity combined with product evangelism is the key to success in the API space, Raju says.

Tradier's capabilities to innovate, iterate, and travel the journey with its customers, partners, and developers has yielded many rewards. The company's long history of working with Apigee has enabled it to assemble a set of people and resources for creating engagement, as well as to create a winning set of APIs for delivering FinTech capabilities.

Considering the transformative future

Looking toward a future in which the financial services industry will experience ongoing disruption, Raju predicts that Tradier will continue to leverage APIs to lead the way.

"I think traditional banks are under attack. They are being replaced by a set of nimble, agile players that are offering a lot of new functionality to customers. This is forcing banks to think about how they can digitize their products through APIs so that they can provide the same functionalities as newer players."

With companies like Tradier and others offering functionality that used to be in-house and exposing it outside, traditional brokerage firms are also being forced to rethink their model. Raju believes that this line of thinking also extends to the Blockchain.

"Exposing Blockchain-like capabilities through APIs is going to be a disruptive influence, and it will be critical for companies to think about how APIs, and more importantly Blockchain, can create value for us."